


As If All The Country Lay on a Wheel (It Turns)

by RandomTiger



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Multiple Wardens, Political Marriage, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-22 15:18:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9613475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomTiger/pseuds/RandomTiger
Summary: Elissa loves to see the queen, even though she rarely gets the chance. It feels like those years will last forever.But the seasons aren't the only thing that changed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bestie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestie/gifts).



 Elissa had been young when she had first talked to Anora, if not small. _‘Ladies grow up fast,’_ her mother had told her, _‘though I certainly hope you never have to.’_ But Elissa had wanted to grow up fast, gain the knowledge and power and respect that her parents already had.

Elissa didn’t remember if Anora had grown up fast, but she imagined that only a grown woman could have really ruled as queen by then. But even before then Anora had always been exceptional, cunning enough to keep Ferelden growing and charming enough that Eleanor had only ever had glowing praises to sing of her, give or take a complaint. Only nineteen, and already everything Elissa had ever wanted to be.

Well, except muscular, but Elissa found her eyes drawn to the jut of her nose amidst her soft face, and then her eyes, and then there had been no room for judgement on Anora's appearance at all.

She hadn’t tried to stop her smile from softening her face as she made her way towards her queen, but Elissa had remembered to dampen the giddiness in her step to something more closely resembling a stately approach.

"Greetings. May I have the honor of your acquaintance, Queen-" and then Elissa had shut her mouth firmly. She should have let Anora introduce herself, and then introduce herself in turn.

"Certainly. I am Anora Mac Tir. And you would be Elissa Cousland, I presume." The queen knew her name! Elissa's embarrassment had turned to triumph, even as her rational mind whispered  _ 'Of course she'd know, you're the second child of the only teryn in the land besides her father.' _

"You presume correctly. I had hoped to discuss the university you are planning." She knew very little about architecture, but far more about books, and not only because her tutor set aside reading for her.

"Oh?" And then a lovely smile had spread across the queen's face, its brilliance incomparable to the polite smile she'd worn before. "I'm afraid it's likely to remain in development for a long time yet. Without books and teachers and funds, it would be but an empty building filled with my plans. Would you wish to enter it?"

"I cannot say whether I would enter a university that does not exist yet, however I wish to see the results." Elissa's hand only slightly hid her smile. A university would mean less training to fight, and more training to rule, or lead, or think. But that was something she could also relish, if it might shape her into someone like the queen. "Tell me yourself; what would it teach?"

.:.:.:.

When Anora next saw the young Cousland, she was holding out a newly bound book. Although Elissa had to crane her head down to look at Anora she didn’t seem to notice. It had been some time since Anora had seen anyone look at her with such transparent delight and admiration.The book Elissa held out to Anora was newly bound, nearly pristine, and a treatise on the treatment of the injured. It endorsed countless remedies from salves made of wild and domestic plants to five different ways to stitch a wound shut, complete with illustrations.

"I wish to offer you this book." The occasion was the third anniversary of her marriage to Cailan. Anora had to crane her head up to look Elissa in the eye. Elissa’s face was filled with transparent delight and admiration.

"What a thoughtful gift. I'd have thought the servants would have delivered it already." It was an uncommon time for gifts among strangers, but perhaps Eleanor had thought of her. 

"Oh no, it's a gift I made myself, so I wanted to bring it to you in person. I think that your father might have used some of these techniques on the battlefield during the revolution." That in itself made Anora clutch the book closer to her chest, although she would hardly have rejected a friendly overture from the Cousland daughter.

"You made it yourself?" Anora would have thought that Elissa would have hired a scribe to copy the book. She examined the handwriting carefully. "You have a beautiful hand. I wouldn't have expected you to have the time."

"It was something of a personal project." Anora raised an eyebrow at the blush on Elissa's face. Elissa turned her face away. "Perhaps it might be useful in your university." 

"That's still a work in progress." Her own personal project, so much bigger than a single book. All the same, the careful attention that Elissa paid that idea charmed her, in times when talk of armies and taxes was so much more frequent. Elissa really did want to please her. "You have my thanks, for I am now one book closer to filling its libraries."

"My queen," another voice called, and Anora turned automatically to the next conversation. When she glanced back Elissa was retreating, her broad shoulders and dark hair still visible above the crowd even as she conversed with a gaggle of others clad just as splendidly as she was.

.:.:.:.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when Elissa would have supported Anora’s coronation without a second of doubt or hesitation. Elissa would have sworn that the queen had hung the moon and outshone the stars, and would never think of doing anything less than savory for herself or the “country”, the parts of it she considered important.

Now, Elissa considered her options, half afraid the wrong move would send the country plummeting into an abyss of… debauchery. Cruelty. Everything she had never thought her country might actually bear.

Loghain, the hero. Loghain, the slaver. Loghain, the general. Loghain, the betrayer. It had ripped open the scabbing wound Howe had dug into her heart. Even now, months later, she couldn’t remove the shrapnel, let alone cauterize the wound.

Couldn’t shake this new suspicion in her heart as she thought of Anora. Anora, who had turned and fled and left them there, to fight her father’s warriors.

_ ‘It’s not like she knew how to fight. Anora didn’t even have a weapon.’  _ But even so, Elissa could have never have left her rescuers to be killed so easily.

Fears she would have laughed off months before thudded through her pulse. Was Anora not only capable of subterfuge, but willing to do any number of things to stay in power?

Elissa just couldn’t be certain, anymore.

But Alistair… Alistair one of the most genuine men she’d ever met. She could see through his white lies easily.

Alistair didn’t know anything about ruling, but she could always trust him to be compassionate. To be too just to murder a family for their mere existence. It was a trust he’d earned through these months. Although Howe had known her father through similar circumstance...

Every road she saw half-convinced Elissa doom would strike their country at any moment.

And that was without considering the Archdemon.

She trusted Anora above all else to be competent.

But to be compassionate...

.:.:.:.

"Marry me, and you will have my support." Elissa's words rang through the small room.

"Oh? That's a tempting offer. You are of Cousland blood, after all." And it would be very useful, in a court only half ashamed to mock the daughter of a cabinetmaker. "But how might we share it?"

Elissa spoke carefully. "There are many different ways a queen might obtain a heir. Were it a happier time, I might have pointed to Oren..." If it were a happier time, any thoughts of taking Anora's hand would have been strangled before they could grow by Cailan's presence. "But these things are not as they once were. "

"Very well. There is no shame in following in the footsteps of Queen Sappho. We will announce our engagement at the Landsmeet."

"And so I add my voice to yours. I trust you will keep your word."

"And you yours, my future consort." Anora smiled at Elissa, and Elissa's heart jumped like she'd run through a battlefield rather than talking her way through it. Like she'd seen the smile of a lover.

"I look forward to seeing you on your rightful throne." Princess-consort she would be, but there was nothing about Anora now that was close enough to touch, no matter how Anora smiled at her. Elissa might have curtsied, had she had a dress left to her name rather than the armor that had kept her alive. Instead, Elissa nodded and left, hoping her returning smile held a shadow of the warmth she remembered.

.:.:.:.

Anora appointed Elissa general, of course. She had learned, as wise rulers do, that the leader of the military is often simply the leader in times of crisis. Elissa had no experience in leading anything larger than the small group, and Loghain had proven he had his own priorities on the battlefield. No matter his experience, that couldn't be allowed.

For all Elissa thought this, she consulted with him, closely as she consulted with Aeducan. Elissa could not suggest her fellow Warden lead either. Sereda was a woman who had laughed in her brother's face and told Bhelen she happily awaited the day the kingdom fell into ruins at his feet. If she felt secretly that Loghain or Anora had betrayed her, there was no guarantee she'd care for the army longer than it took to bring down the Archdemon. Watching Sereda's decision on whether to take the final blow or to let another do it would be interesting.

Only three people knew of last night's events, and Morrigan was busy eating to strengthen herself for the battle to come.

This wasn't what she _meant_ by finding a way to obtain a heir. Even so, the chance to live was tempting. Most likely Loghain would even never see his child. Another thing he could add to the list of what he'd done for the "Good of Ferelden", and hardly competing for the worst of the lot.

Anora could never know.

.:.:.:.

Elissa turned her head to watch Anora led to the altar by Loghain, who’d changed out of his armor for the occasion, even as she herself clung to Fergus' hand. She let go of him slowly, smiling at the row of nobles and her friends. She turned towards her fiancée as the Grand Cleric Elemena kept her neutrality gracefully, Elemena's eyes lingering on Loghain for but a moment.

Elissa could have recited the marriage vows by heart, but somehow every word Elemena said flew in one ear and out the other as she instead listened for Anora’s heartbeat, watched her betrothed’s pale face.

It was not a noble’s place to question their ruler under a great many circumstances. This was something Elissa had learned at her father’s knee. Their ancestors had not always been royalists, but even now there was shame tied in with the anger, consternation married in with the pride.

“Do you, Anora Mac Tir, take Elissa Cousland as your lawfully wedded wife?”

But, as she had sat at her father’s knee, she had seen so often her mother sitting beside him, reigning him in and listening to him in turn, a pair that always took the other’s thoughts into consideration.

“I do.”

Some parts of her remained untouched. Elissa still believed that faith, trust, everything that childhood friendship hadn’t managed to confirm between Howe and her father, could be found in a matrimonial bond.

“And do you, Elissa Cousland, take Anora Mac Tir’s hand in marriage?”

In love.

Elissa looked across at her miracle of a queen, who had always shone so brightly no matter what doubts had been cast in the dark, about what a girl whose mother had been a cabinetmaker could do. She saw just a hint of the nerves wracking her bethrothed face, and the full, beautiful brunt of her determination.

It hadn’t been hard to love Anora before.

She would just need to keep going, and not flinch back from the pain, from fear of more betrayal. To walk willingly into this fire in hopes it would forge them together. To face what her nerves silently swore to be certain death, determined to walk out the other side.

“I do.”

Anora’s lips were soft. They tasted like pink lip stain and cake.

This were everything she had always and never wanted.

Elissa had faith. Maybe not a faith as unshakable as Leliana's, but one as hard and firmly carved as stone. She knew that she and her wife could unite their vision for Ferelden.

She had to.

**Author's Note:**

> Queen Sappho is completely made up, since Fereldan history varies even between codexes. Grand Cleric Elemena exists, and in this universe she is aware Loghain locked up her Templars.


End file.
